


So, You Want to Play with Magic?

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 23:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: a brief exploration into a world inspired by Katy Perry's "Dark Horse"





	So, You Want to Play with Magic?

The “thump” as she hit the floor was dull; the lightning bolt of pain searing her shoulder and then her entire right side was not. Ice cold was the marble beneath her, and dark like an abyss from what little surface she could see through the strands of purple fallen into her face. Nails dug back into her shoulders like claws, hoisting her up onto her knees and holding her there from behind. Arms pinned to her sides by the claws, she threw her head back to whip away her hair.  
  
And then she saw the queen, perched and poised on her throne.  
  
Black mahogany carved to a deadly sharp point like cathedral spires piercing the sky, and the queen sat on dark red leather, deep like blood. Blood also painted a shrewdly quirked smile in the form of red lipstick. The queen almost dared to lick those lips, as a predator eyeing prey might.  
  
“…Your Majesty,” Mal bowed her head…out of fear of losing it should she not.  
  
Yes, the queen almost dared to lick her lips. It had been ages since a woman on her knees before her was able to keep her head.  
  
“I knew you’d come.”  
  
Oh, her voice. A breathy rasp somehow both delicate and hardened, like nails raking down the skin of Mal’s back. Nails, the queen’s nails, tapped out an idle rhythm on the throne’s armrest, blue polish meeting black wood. Mal leaving the castle with watercolors of blue and black on her skin was the best case scenario at this point. She raised her head; the queen had spoken. Better look her in the eyes. Groveling was beneath Mal, preserving her life was not.  
  
“You knew I’d come. I’ve heard that you see all, Your Majesty. The stories are obviously true.”  
  
“Mm. Magic mirror on the wall, who is the young lady fair that sees it all?”  
  
Mal had mistaken it for nothing but an empty frame at first glance, the golden oval hung on the stone wall above the queen’s head. But the blackness within it churned at her words, a void of smoke and writhing tendrils beginning to whip at a gaunt green face, the mask of a ghoul conjured up from some strange netherworld to stand at Her Majesty’s beck and call.  
  
 _“…Lips red as the rose, skin smooth as alabaster, hair blue as sapphire. ‘Tis you, Queen Evie, who sees one, sees all.”_

Churning, churning, behind the glass, the slave in the mirror disappearing back to the world beyond time from whence it came.  
  
Evie was pleased with the mirror’s answer. It showed on the tilted corners of her lips. She rose to her feet like an angel might rise to the clouds, or a demon might rise from a grave. The sleek silk of her dress, of course deep blue, pooled around her feet like dark ocean waves, rippling with each step she took. Mal couldn’t keep from being fixated on the curves, on the shape of the queen’s body hugged so viciously under the material. But then again, maybe her enchantment was just that; enchantment. Maybe this was why she was here to begin with.  
  
“So the daughter of Maleficent has finally escaped The Isle and traveled such a long way to my humble little kingdom of Grimm,” Evie purred, a sharpened knife of mocking hidden behind every syllable. “…To what? Throw herself at my feet?”  
  
Mal half expected the guards clutching at her back to literally throw her at the queen’s feet. Just for a visual aid.  
  
“…I came here to learn, Your Majesty,” Mal spoke through clenched teeth, shoulders squeezed tight.  
  
One feathered eyebrow raised.  
  
“Is that so?”   
  
Blue nails down Mal’s back again.  
  
“I escaped from The Isle to a land with magic, but Auradon has no place for villains. And without a spellbook, or guidance, or  _any_  clue how to use my powers, I couldn’t make my own place,” Mal explained.  
  
“In a trail of fire and blood, no doubt,” Evie mused. “Some prodigy you turned out to be. Poor little daughter of Maleficent, clawing her way to freedom only to be powerless in the face of her adversaries. How does it feel to be powerless, daughter of Maleficent?”  
  
Teeth clenched now for reasons other than pain.  
  
“…I’ve felt better,” she answered. “And my name is Mal.”  
  
A shot like an arrowhead lodged deep into her chest, that’s what her slip of the tongue felt like it would earn her.  
  
“…Your Majesty,” she hurriedly added as a saving grace.  
  
No loss of her head, no arrows. No patterns of black and blue painted across her skin. The queen simply pondered.  
  
“…Mal,” she repeated, testing the word out like a cautious dip in the water.  
  
Mal wasn’t sure she appreciated the way that part of herself rolled off the queen’s tongue. Or how it sent something electric through her to hear it.  
  
“So Mal has come to Grimm to learn. Come one, come all to the queen’s court, see her sleight of hand, her magic and mysticism,” Queen Evie laughed. Queen Evie jeered. “And what makes you think you’re my first? The first weary sorceress to kneel before me and beg to be taught? No, Mal, you’re just the first one to be caught sneaking around the castle walls.”  
  
The guards’ claws tightened around Mal, as if she wasn’t reminded enough already.  
  
“I’m not like the others,” she said, holding her stiff neck high.  
  
“No, obviously not. Most people just use the front doors.”   
  
“I didn’t come to waste my time with your guards or your court, I came to have an audience with the queen herself.”  
  
Auradon had chocolate, deep and rich, warm shades of mocha and walnut, and every other creamy brown hue in between. None of it held a candle to the hardened Tiger’s Eye quartz looking down at her from behind the queen’s lashes.  
  
“How very bold of you to think that your time is more precious than mine,” Evie said.  
  
“With all due respect, Your Highness, you and I both come from The Isle.”  
  
Mal saw a shadow pass over the royal features, The Isle an ugly truth in Queen Evie’s past that she did not care to discuss. Mal went on.  
  
“You and I both come from The Isle, and that’s something that connects all us villains no matter how much we hate to admit it. Those sorceresses, they beg to learn parlor tricks without knowing what it’s like to beg for their lives. They crawl under warm blankets at night where you and I spent our childhoods crawling under tattered scraps of cloth. Their mothers raised them on praise while our mothers raised us on beatings. These people are soft, and mindless, not knowing how to work for what they want and not ruthless enough to take the power you offer and do what needs to be done.”  
  
“And you are?” Evie questioned. Tiger’s Eye quartz gleamed in anticipation of an answer. “Mal of The Isle, who was chased away by the do-gooders of Auradon all because she was left behind without mommy’s spellbook?”  
  
“I wouldn’t need a spellbook if I had you,” Mal said firmly.  
  
She watched from orbs of jade as they traced the plane of Queen Evie’s face, every smooth muscle twitch, every minuscule quiver of the lip, gauging a reaction. None.  
  
“I didn’t know you on The Isle, Your Highness. But you’re the daughter of evil. I’m the daughter of malevolence.  _Imagine_  what we could do together, if only you would show me how.”  
  
Mal could hear the breathing of the guards behind her in the silence. She didn’t think she could hear any breathing from the queen.  
  
Evie carried magic beyond that which trickled through her veins, for with a single wave of a slender hand the nails were dug out of Mal’s shoulders, guard boots tromped away along the blackened marble, and the air shook with the closing of the throne room’s magnificent oak doors.  
  
Mal and Queen Evie were left alone.  
  
“…I could kill you, Mal.”  
  
The soft, deadly rasp was both a threat and a promise.  
  
“A snap of my fingers could snap your flimsy little neck. I could burn you from the inside out and then laugh at the irony of it all, of a dragon slain by a former princess’ fire. And if I so wanted to I could reach my fingers inside you and curl them tight, crushing your heart to dust while it still beats. You see Mal, you don’t know me. The Queen of Hearts could learn a thing or two from  _my_ fickle temperament. I worked very hard to become the most feared sorceress in all the lands, fought very hard to beat back your mother’s shadow. So tell me, why in the world would I teach you and risk giving up my throne?”  
  
“Why don’t you go back to The Isle and ask the Hydra? Two heads are better than one.”  
  
Mal stifled a flinch down there on the floor, cursed her own attitude. The queen’s expression was utterly unreadable.  
  
“You have a sharp tongue,” Evie said, looking down at Mal with narrowed eyes.  
  
“Forked like a dragon’s,” Mal smiled slyly, aiming to tease, aiming to lighten the mood.  
  
“Or like a snake’s,” Her Majesty snapped. “Like a filthy snake slithering around the castle grounds, slipping inside and waiting to strike.”  
  
“I know my word means nothing to you, so I won’t bother giving it. But you have nothing to lose, Your Majesty. Like you say, you could kill me where you stand without hardly even having to lift a finger. If I step one inch out of line, I’m dead. So be it. I’m no risk to you.”  
  
“Except for when the student surpasses the master.”  
  
“That’s entirely in your hands. What I do and don’t learn, how far I do or don’t rise,” Mal said.  
  
The queen laughed at the notion, the sound pricking at Mal’s skin, up and down like the touch of a ghost.  
  
“Keeping a dragon on a short leash,” Evie said in amusement.  
  
“…You have nothing to lose,” Mal repeated. “And everything to gain. A queen shouldn’t have to do her own dirty work. If she had me, she wouldn’t have to.”  
  
“Hm. Not so much a dragon on a short leash as a dragon for hire,” the queen mused to herself.  
  
Even freed from the guards and their oppressive hold, Mal didn’t dare rise to her feet without permission.   
  
“Get up,” Evie finally gave that permission.  
  
Mal moved carefully on sore legs, feeling out her balance, rooting her feet to the marble. The queen took an appraising glance at her; examining, judging, perhaps even…admiring? The gleam in her hardened eyes was indiscriminate, spilling no secrets. Mal just couldn’t keep her mouth shut.  
  
“And besides…”  
  
Curse her own attitude.  
  
“…You may have crawled out from under my mother’s shadow, but you’ve yet to crawl out from mine.”  
  
A gleam in a hardened pair of eyes turned to a fiery flash.  
  
“That sharp tongue of yours is going to get you into trouble unless you learn how to use it right,” Queen Evie warned.  
  
“Then teach me.”  
  
It took no time at all—much like the tables turning and Evie becoming the striking snake—for one hand to lash out and close around Mal’s throat. Blue dug into her soft skin, and the suffocating pressure was instant.  
  
“Don’t make me your enemy, Mal.”  
  
“…I won’t, Your Highness,” Mal choked out.  
  
She saw blood red lips curve with amusement through hazy eyes.  
  
“Your word means nothing to me, remember?” the queen’s smile was sharp, a blade against Mal’s throat.  
  
The world narrowed, speckling the edges of her vision with black like mud and tar, swallowing her alive. The pressure filled her ears, her nose, she was drowning where she stood.   
  
Well, she’d made it twenty-two years. She honestly never even thought she’d make it  _that_ far.  
  
“Take my heart,” she painfully whispered with one of her last breaths.  
  
The release was instantaneous as Evie let her loose, Mal staggered on her feet under the crushing weight of a wave of oxygen washing over her. Deep gasping breaths bounced all the way up to the high ceiling of the throne room while the queen looked on as if she were watching a fiendishly delightful show.  
  
“Come again?” that smirk, that voice; Mal could’ve easily collapsed under them both.  
  
“…I know you can,” Mal rubbed her throat. Seemed she’d be leaving painted black and blue after all. “One of your mother’s old tricks. You take my heart, you take my will. My power to fight back.”  
  
“…How very stupid of you to willingly give up such a thing.”  
  
Mal cast her eyes away, staring down into the abyss of the tile at her feet.  
  
“It’s not like I need it…” she murmured.  
  
“…No. You don’t. You need a good night’s sleep for what lies ahead. You’ll find my mother’s old castle has quite the spacious accommodations.”  
  
Mal’s mind was twisted briefly with thoughts of a soft bed and softer sheets, after a lifetime on The Isle and weeks on the road to Grimm. Thoughts of the real world forced their way in soon enough.  
  
“You’re keeping me?” Mal questioned incredulously, hating the words, hating the implication that she  _was_ a thing to be kept.  
  
The queen said nothing, did nothing, but still the doors grated open to let the guards back in, back to escort Mal to a comfy room instead of a cold marble floor.  
  
“What can I say?” Queen Evie chuckled, the sound dark and dangerous. “I’ve always wanted a pet dragon.” 


End file.
